Cigarette Ads Skewered as Manipulating Women

Published: September 6, 1992

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 5—
Tobacco companies have tried for years to attract female smokers with slogans like, "You've come a long way, baby."

Now a state advertising campaign is telling women that they have been exploited, and for too long.

In one of the commercials, a billboard model comes to life and stubs out her cigarette on an advertising executive's balding scalp.

The ads, which do not identify individual tobacco companies, began appearing on Minnesota television and radio stations this week.

"It's a message that women are being manipulated and they can do something about it," said Kathy Harty, who, as chief of the smoking prevention program for the Minnesota Department of Public Health, helped create the $321,000 campaign. "We want you to think about it twice: 'Do I really want this cigarette? Do I really want to make someone else rich and myself sick?' "

Ms. Harty said the new ads were aimed at active, healthy women from 18 to 30 years old who smoke occasionally, usually when they are socializing. Her department decided to focus on women instead of men because a 1989 survey by the agency found that women were not quitting smoking at the same rate as men.

Minnesota and other states have aimed anti-smoking ads at women before. But Martin-Williams Advertising, the Minneapolis agency that produced the new campaign, and Tom Lauria, a spokesman for the tobacco industry, agreed that this was the first time that such ads had used the female-exploitation theme.

Mr. Lauria, who works for the Tobacco Institute, and the campaign's supporters agree on little else.

"I don't believe that ads that ridicule the industry will be very effective in stopping smoking," he said. "The Minnesota ads make the presumption that women are in a second-class status that warrants special protection, when in fact they have the same ability as men to make the choice for themselves."

One of the television commercials shows a billboard depicting a young, leotard-clad woman smoking a cigarette. Two male ad executives stand admiring it, and one exclaims that women "will love it." The woman on the billboard suddenly becomes real and stubs the cigarette out on his head.

Another spot, 30 seconds long, shows a billboard with three smiling women smoking cigarettes, and the slogan, "Women are making the rush to rich flavor." Panels then peel off, changing the message to, "Women are making us rich."

In one of the radio ads, a woman thanks cigarette makers for "your portrayal of us as shallow and superficial."

"Thank you for making our hair smell like an ashtray," she says. "Thank you for staining our teeth and increasing our dry-cleaning bills. Thank you for the 52,000 cases of lung cancer you cause in women each year. We only hope we can return the favor some day."